Page:Route Across the Rocky Mountains with a Description of Oregon and California.djvu/19



n the latter part of May, 1843, we left Independence, a small town in the Western part of the State of Missouri, situated six miles South of the Missouri River and twelve miles from the Western line of the State, and now the principal starting point for all the companies engaged in the Western and New Mexican trade, and place of general rendezvous of persons from all parts of the United States, wishing to emigrate or travel beyond the Rocky Mountains. In a few hours we passed the Western boundary of the State, and came into the territory of the Shawnee Indians. They occupy a small, but very beautiful and fertile country, laying immediately West of the State line. The Shawnees have made considerable advancement towards civilization. Many of them have good farms and comfortable houses. Some of them are good Mechanics, and most of them speak the English language tolerably well.

We were traveling here in the great Santa Fe trace, and again and again, we passed long trains of Merchant wagons, laden with the products of our Manufactories and other Merchandize, and bearing them afar across the deserts, to be exchanged for the gold and silver of the Provinces of Mexico. This trace is large, and as well beaten, as many of the most important public highways in the States.

After leaving the country of the Shawnees, we came next into that of the Kanzas Indians. Theirs, also, is a very beautiful country; entirely in a state of nature. It differs but little from the Western part of Missouri, except that the surface is more undulating, and that it has less timber. Here we left the last traces of civilization, and seemed, for a time, to be beyond even the borders of animated existence. Not even the song of a bird